


Night Terrors

by latin_cat



Category: Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-07
Updated: 2012-03-07
Packaged: 2017-11-01 15:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latin_cat/pseuds/latin_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night after the Battle of Assaye, Wellesley has nightmares.  (Set after <i>Triumph</i>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Terrors

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a real episode, which I have embellished with a little gratuitous horror.
> 
>   
> **“I acknowledge that I should not like to see again such loss as I sustained on  
>  the 23rd September, even if attended by such a gain.”** – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (on the Battle of Assaye).

How different do you suppose are the dreams of soldiers and their generals? The same human desires beat within their breasts, the same human minds slumber in the night; yet how different can the thoughts of these men be. On the night after a battle many a man’s sleep is disturbed – often avoiding them altogether – whilst exhaustion can take others and not release them until day-break. On the night of 23rd September 1803, after the battle of Assaye, the British troops that had won that great victory in India slept amongst the dead, and such a setting cannot make easy sleep for even the hardiest of constitutions. Such a scene lends itself readily to the creation of nightmares, when it is the stuff of nightmares to begin with.

The sky was full of dark half-light, grey clouds scudding across the heavens rumbling with the distant promise of thunder. Twisted trees with gnarled branches stood either side of the road, what few animals therein were mangy and scrawny. Not a breath of wind was to be felt is the dry, suffocating heat.

He had to hurry, or they’d be here soon.

The path led out to an open hillside from which he looked down to see the battlefield spread out before him. Against the twilight the Kaitna and the Juah looked brown; dark with the monsoon rains and the blood of dead men. He could have sworn this hill had not been here before; yet here he was standing on it, so it must have been.

Behind him in the tangled forest there was movement as thin, filthy people slunk through the trees going about their business gathering firewood, dirt and moss in baskets. They were all dressed in ragged grey clothes, all black haired with grimy skin, sullen expressions and hateful eyes. Irish. Yet he knew they wouldn’t harm him if he left them alone, and so he moved onwards, descending carefully onto the plain.

_Arthur…_

A voice called his name.

Don’t answer it, he told himself. Just keep going.

All about him were the bodies of English and Indian troops piled on either side of the road, blooded, pale and broken; red coats, blue coats, silk tunics and turbans, bright shields, muskets and bejewelled swords – but all with their dead, glassy eyes open and focussed on him. A woman and two small boys lay directly in his path, lifeless, blood spattered on their once fine clothes and deadly-white flesh. Their eyes were closed, and they looked as if they could be sleeping. They should not have been here. None of them should.

_Arthur…_

They were coming for him. Cold sweat trickled down his spine beneath his shirt and he shivered; he had not felt fear like this since childhood, when a small boy had clutched at his sheets in the dark of a nursery or dormitory, frightened of what may be lurking beyond his tiny mattress in the dark. Now he was alone again, yet with no sheets as a barrier between him and his fears. He had to run, to hide and escape them, but he turned and saw… It was too late; they were here!

Behind him, blocking the path he had come by, men and women; all looking dead, their skins pale and stretched, eyes hollow, mud and decay on their dishevelled clothes. Their wizened, stiff arms reached out to him, their hands claw-like. Amongst them he recognised Richard, his mother, William, Henry, Anne, McCandless, Harris, Baird, Stevenson – anyone that he had ever loved or whose opinion had ever mattered to him. They glared at him with dark, hollow eyes; contempt in their expressions as they held him in their sights. He took a step back, shaking his head in disbelief.

“No!” he protested. His heart pounded fiercely in his bosom. “No, please! I did not know! I could not do anything else! Please, it was not my fault!”

He wanted to escape, to get away from them, but everywhere the dead surrounded him; the rotten, stinking smell of blood and flesh from the battlefield corpses stinging his nostrils and sickening him. He was trapped by the dead, and the dead were closing in; their black, empty mouths hissing scornful accusations.

_You failed…_

_We always said you’d come to no good…_

“No, please!”

_Food for powder, nothing more…_

Arthur turned and ran. The woman and the two boys still lay in his path and he made leap over them, but at the point where his feet left the ground the woman’s arm shot up, came to life independent of her body, and caught him around the ankle. He fell, rolled onto the dusty road and was down amongst the dead, and above him the walking corpses closed in.

_You failed them, Arthur…_

_You let them die…_

All around him decayed, wizened hands suddenly broke up from out of the ground, grabbing hold of his limbs, his clothes and pinning him down; held fast to his nightmares.

“Sharpe!” he cried desperately, his eyes wild, his fingers clawing at the barren ground, desperate to find purchase. “Help me!”

But his cry went unanswered, no help would come, because Sharpe was dead along with the rest of them; dragged, pulled under the stagnant water of the Juah, his chest split open by a Maharatta sword, his heart still beating within – a blood-red, beating jewel… Hope died, all courage deserted him and Arthur screamed, fighting for all he was worth against the spindly fingers, his breath choking as they wrapped around his throat, but it was useless, and the hold on him only tightened.

_Give in…_

_You’ve lost…_

_You are lost…_

_Forgotten… Dead… Buried…_

_Insignificant… Worthless…_

_You’ve failed…_

He could feel himself dying. Soon he would be covered, unable to move and the ground would open, slowly pulling him down beneath the rank soil to bury him with the rest of his dead where the spiders, worms and beetles would chew at his flesh and the rats gnaw his bones.

“Sir Arthur! Sir! God in Heaven, sir, wake up!”

Wellesley’s eyes snapped open, his hands clutching convulsively at the arms that gripped him. Someone had been shaking him violently and he stared wild-eyed up at the drawn face of Colin Campbell, pale beneath his sunburnt tan.

“Sir Arthur?”

Wellesley’s jaw worked silently for a brief moment before he managed to speak.

“C… Campbell?”

The relief which flooded Campbell’s face was all too clear.

“Oh, thank the Lord, sir! You’re awake!”

Wellesley continued to stare at his aide, his mind working furiously to catch up with events, his breath coming in deep, shorter pants now that the sinewy fingers were gone from his throat.

“But… What…”

“A nightmare, sir,” Campbell said calmly. “The sentries heard and alerted me to your distress.”

“Distress” was in truth something of an understatement. Colin Campbell had been summoned from his bed and arrived to find the Sir Arthur writhing on his mattress and crying out, sheets flung to one side, his hands clawing at some invisible stranglehold about his neck. Fearing some sort of seizure Campbell had called for a doctor. Wellesley’s cries had become more desperate, suddenly stopping altogether. He had began to still, his breathing reduced to short, shallow gasps snatched through an open mouth – which was when panic had overtaken Captain Campbell and he had grabbed hold of the general’s shoulders and started bellowing in his ear.

Meanwhile Wellesley looked up at his aide in astonishment. Here was Campbell, alive, and he was alive too; so was the doctor standing nervously close by and the sentries peeking through the open door of the goat shed which was serving tonight as a makeshift bedchamber. A nightmare. Yes, it could not have been anything else; not now that he thought about it. He had won the battle. He had won, but with so many casualties on both sides; so many that tonight his men were sleeping amongst the dead. Sweat had drenched his thin shirt – the same sweat that he had felt in his dream – making it stick to his chest and he shivered.

“My God, Campbell,” he said, at last finding his voice, though it was strangely hoarse. “They were dead! All of them, dead! Our men, Scindia’s… and I was being dragged down to die with them!”

“Just a nightmare, sir,” Campbell repeated soothingly, gently prising off Wellesley’s fingers which had been clutching at his shirtsleeves.

“Yes. Yes, just a nightmare.”

But he had won. Yes, he had won, and he was alive… though only alive for one reason. A momentary panic returned as his eyes snapped back up to Campbell.

“And Sharpe? What about Sharpe?”

Campbell frowned.

“What about him, sir?”

“Is he here? Is he alive?”

“I, I believe so, sir.” Though the captain was baffled by the sudden mention of Sergeant – no, _Ensign_ Sharpe, he did not wish to distress Sir Arthur any further. “Yes, he is alive too, sir.”

Wellesley let out a sigh of relief, now finally relaxing and closed his eyes. Yes, it was all a nightmare. All of it. Every last bit of it, including the blood-stone heart.

“Thank you, Campbell,” he said finally. “I am sorry you were disturbed. It is nonsense; foolish nonsense to have robbed you of your rest.”

“Not at all, sir.” The captain was still not entirely satisfied as to the well-being of his chief; the general still looked decidedly shaken. “Are you certain you are alright, sir? I can have the doctor stay with you if –”

“No no, I am fine. Truly. You may go, Campbell, and so may the doctor.”

They left, reluctantly, and when he was certain they were gone Wellesley drew his knees up on the thin mattress, hugging them to his chest and resting his chin there. All a dream – but a dream that had contained real fears; strong, overwhelming fears that he had thought long eradicated or buried beyond resurrection. How wrong he had been.

For what must have been the first time in almost twenty years, Arthur Wellesley prayed that sleep would not return to claim him that night.

**Author's Note:**

> When reading the Elizabeth Longford biography she claims that the night after the battle Wellington suffered a nightmare which he described as ‘a confused notion that we were all killed…’. Later in life Wellington always claimed Assaye as his greatest battle (Not surprising when you look at the numbers involved), yet he also acknowledged how easily things could have gone differently.


End file.
